The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Invid99]

11 minutes ago, Keith said:

No, they're the U.N. Spacy's Varuta Expedition fleet retooled by the Protodevelin + additional personnel from the Macross 5 fleet also retooled by the Protodevilin.

Do we have any pictures of their forces except for the SDF-1? Or can we assume they have almost identical vehicles and mechs like the Zentraedi?

[Keith]

Just now, Invid99 said:

Do we have any pictures of their forces except for the SDF-1? Or can we assume they have almost identical vehicles and mechs like the Zentraedi?

I believe the DYRL gold book has sketches of the ASS-1 pre-crash. Aside from that, we only have the shots used in the first ep, and the ship from The ep where they stole the factory satellite.

Kinda makes me wish they'd do Gunbuster styled Zentradi history shorts with Exedor.

[Invid99]

39 minutes ago, Keith said:

I believe the DYRL gold book has sketches of the ASS-1 pre-crash. Aside from that, we only have the shots used in the first ep, and the ship from The ep where they stole the factory satellite.

Kinda makes me wish they'd do Gunbuster styled Zentradi history shorts with Exedor.

Yeah that would be cool! 

[RedWolf]

Though motif and coloring may be similar to the Supervision Army. Exsedol found the Varauta VFs eerily familiar but dismissed that thought as they were Miclones. The Supervsion Army of the current era are all of Zentradi stock.

As for how the Protodevlin managed to build a fleet of 500 ships and thousands of mecha after only taking over a colony for a few years they cheated. They had their own unique Factory Satellite,  Protodevlin Heritage,  stolen from the Protoculture that they hid before being captured. Unlike other Factory Satellites that use robot drones to gather resource materials this one produces armaments with matter replication using Fold energy, violating the law of the conservation of mass and energy. Especially tuned to their Spiritia signature, Sophia Spiritia,for activation and has the capacity for mass brainwashing. 

 

In Macross the Ride it revealed as Operation Stargazer was going on an infiltration team was inserted to gather intelligence. The team led by the Zentradi Naresuan discover the Protoeevlin was experimenting on a pure bred Zentradi girl that has the same Sophia Spiritia as them thus having the ability similar to a Spiritia Blackhole around her when she sings. The girl Chelsea Scarlet was rescued and Milia instructed Hakuna Aoba who was part of that mission to watch over her as she grows up. Meanwhile Naresuan joined the Earth Supremacist faction Lactence bringing with him the information about the Protodevlin Heritage. Lactence lost the Second Unification War in 2050 to 2051. Naresuan made his own group Fasces whose goal is still the supremacy of Earth and centralization of government. Posing as a pirate outfit abducting ships and crews for brainwashing to add to their troops. In 2058 Fasces attempted to kidnap Chelsea Scarlet along with the Macross Galaxy resort ship Evouna during the Vanquish Race. Fasces was thwarted by a Volunteer corps of VF racers however they are still in possession of the Protodevlin Heritage Factory Satellite.

 

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Achievement wise the Kawamori continuity is much more impressive with Human expansion and rapid technological progress. Due to stealing 20 Factory Satellites. Macross II continuity was less ambitious as UN Spacy stole one Factory Satellite at a time , twice. However Macross II being a direct sequel to DYRL much of their warships are Zentradi ships leftover from Space War 1. They only produced their later generation capitals after they stole their second Factory Satellite. The pace also of their VF development is not as rapid as the original designer of the VF-1 survived and it got its life extended with the VF-1R series. There is no VF designer competition between Shinsei Industries and General Galaxy as it is monopolized by the Tachikoff Company. Sure there is a VF-4 Siren but it significantly different from the VF-4 Lightning III as it is more like the VF-1 in transformation.

Maybe, but the Kawamori universe seems to have more trouble with the Main fleets than the MII continuity. Also, Earth doesn't seem as much a wasteland in the MII universe as in the main timeline. I guess it depends upon where development is being prioritized.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, RedWolf said:

[...] However Macross II being a direct sequel to DYRL much of their warships are Zentradi ships leftover from Space War 1. [...]

... and the defections/captures from subsequent Zentradi encounters.  

Shipbuilding isn't much of a priority when fresh warships practically deliver themselves to you complete with crews every couple years.

 

8 hours ago, RedWolf said:

[...] They only produced their later generation capitals after they stole their second Factory Satellite. [...]

They had other original ships prior to that, like the Daedalus II-class.

 

8 hours ago, RedWolf said:

The pace also of their VF development is not as rapid as the original designer of the VF-1 survived and it got its life extended with the VF-1R series. There is no VF designer competition between Shinsei Industries and General Galaxy as it is monopolized by the Tachikoff Company. Sure there is a VF-4 Siren but it significantly different from the VF-4 Lightning III as it is more like the VF-1 in transformation.

It's more like the pace of development was distributed differently... some technologies advanced faster than in the main timeline, while others advanced more slowly or not at all.

For example, while the Macross II timeline may not have inertia capacitors and the power of thermonuclear reaction engines grew much faster in the main timeline the Macross II timeline developed beam gunpods much faster (back in the 2030s) and had applied drone technology to create funnels and bits when the main timeline was still working on making drone fighters able to fight effectively on their own.

 

 

7 hours ago, Invid99 said:

So is the Varauta Army in Macross 7 the Supervision army the Zentraedi fought against 500k years ago? The same mecha and ships? 

It's somewhat unhelpful to say it like this... but the Varauta forces are the Varauta forces.

Most of them were/are the UN Spacy defense force maintained by the Megaroad-13 emigrant fleet after it colonized the third planet in the Varauta 3198XE star system.  The others were members of the UN Spacy's Blue Rhinoceros special forces who'd accompanied the investigation of the system's fourth planet and were the first ones to be spiritia drained by the Protodeviln after they were accidentally released (see Macross 7 PLUS: Spiritia Dreaming).  Midway through the conflict, the Varauta forces "drafted" the survivors of Macross 5's defense forces to bolster their numbers.

The Varauta forces under Protodeviln control continued to use the same ships and equipment they had used before the system was taken over, which were modified somewhat to improve their performance and add capabilities related to harvesting spiritia.  The only new weapon introduced after the colony was taken over was a dedicated aircraft carrier the Varauta system's defense forces had previously lacked (having gone for a Zentradi-style battleship/carrier hybrid setup previously).

 

 

3 hours ago, Invid99 said:

Do we have any pictures of their forces except for the SDF-1? Or can we assume they have almost identical vehicles and mechs like the Zentraedi?

None, save for the picture of the pre-crash Supervision Army version of the SDF-1 Macross in the Macross Model Hobby Handbook and the picture of the derelict from Ep30 of the original series, which was presumed to be the same type.

 

 

1 hour ago, RedWolf said:

As for how the Protodevlin managed to build a fleet of 500 ships and thousands of mecha after only taking over a colony for a few years they cheated. They had their own unique Factory Satellite, [...]

Eh... only partly.  Macross Chronicle asserts that a fair amount of the fleet the Protodeviln mobilized for Gepernich's spiritia farm project - including Gepernich's own flagship - were pre-existing ships from the Varauta colony's UN Spacy defense force that were modified after being captured.  The only one that was explicitly new was the dedicated carrier they'd introduced late in the war.

 

 

15 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Maybe, but the Kawamori universe seems to have more trouble with the Main fleets than the MII continuity. Also, Earth doesn't seem as much a wasteland in the MII universe as in the main timeline. I guess it depends upon where development is being prioritized.

Eh... I'm not sure I would agree with that assessment, since the only portions of Earth we see in Macross II are heavily developed urban areas and cultivated parklands.

In the main timeline, the only part of Earth we really see on a regular basis is the center of Macross City in Alaska.

(The Macross II UN Spacy doesn't really have a ton of choice about having more experience with the Zentradi... you can't fold a planet away from an approaching fleet the way you can an emigrant ship.)

[pengbuzz]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... I'm not sure I would agree with that assessment, since the only portions of Earth we see in Macross II are heavily developed urban areas and cultivated parklands.

In the main timeline, the only part of Earth we really see on a regular basis is the center of Macross City in Alaska.

  Fair enough; It would have been interesting to see how much both of them had rehabilitated/ developed in total. It just seemed to me that MII had progressed a bit more.

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(The Macross II UN Spacy doesn't really have a ton of choice about having more experience with the Zentradi... you can't fold a planet away from an approaching fleet the way you can an emigrant ship.)

True. That does make me wonder if Protoculture were trying to develop that kind of tech (move entire planets)?

*Imagining a hilarious image of an Earth-like planet trucking past a colony fleet with a enormous "U-Haul" banner around it. *

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

True. That does make me wonder if Protoculture were trying to develop that kind of tech (move entire planets)?

*Imagining a hilarious image of an Earth-like planet trucking past a colony fleet with a enormous "U-Haul" banner around it. *

So... like this?

(That's the Oracle mothership from Phantasy Star Online 2... a massive propulsion system built around the sentient planet Xion.)

 

If Uroboros in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and Windermere IV in Macross Delta are any indication, the Protoculture's preferred method to being left alone or ensuring that things they left behind were left alone was to construct intense artificial fold faults around the planet so severe that fold travel becomes impossible.  (Like the Uroboros Aurora, the fold fault that cuts the planet Uroboros off from the rest of the galaxy for months or years at a time.)

[RedWolf]

In Macross II you can see their cities built on Zentradi ships. And we don't know if those are permanently downed ships or they are able to fly again.

 

Also defense strategies between the two settings are different. Macross II treats the Solar System as layers of defensive lines and relying on the Minmay defense. Meanwhile as seen in Macross Plus Earth has a defense grid of satellites and fleets so anybody paying a visit would have a surprise. This propensity towards heavy firepower can seen also with the Varauta Fleet Carrier and Planet Vulcan's laser satellites. Macross II has its own fleet killer with the Macross Cannon class.

 

 

[pengbuzz]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... like this?

(That's the Oracle mothership from Phantasy Star Online 2... a massive propulsion system built around the sentient planet Xion.)

 

If Uroboros in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and Windermere IV in Macross Delta are any indication, the Protoculture's preferred method to being left alone or ensuring that things they left behind were left alone was to construct intense artificial fold faults around the planet so severe that fold travel becomes impossible.  (Like the Uroboros Aurora, the fold fault that cuts the planet Uroboros off from the rest of the galaxy for months or years at a time.)

Yeah...just missing the U-Haul banner.

[JB0]

On 12/5/2021 at 2:04 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Maybe.  What becomes of them after the events of Macross 7 aren't really clear... they just take off for parts unknown, announcing they have no further need of this galaxy because they've found a "spiritia paradise" by learning how to self-generate spiritia.

And then FB7 has one of them delivering the beauty of video cassettes to the Frontier cast. Because why not?

Edited December 6, 2021 by JB0

[AN/ALQ128]

the beauty of rewinding that tape

[RaisingCane]

If DYRL is regarded as in-universe cinematic dramatization of the events of Space War 1, could that mean that Macross II is also an in-universe work of fiction (e.g. the Macross universe's equivalent of, say, Independence Day)?

[DYRL VF-1S]

2 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

If DYRL is regarded as in-universe cinematic dramatization of the events of Space War 1, could that mean that Macross II is also an in-universe work of fiction (e.g. the Macross universe's equivalent of, say, Independence Day)?

The difference is that M7 is what canonizes DYRL. There's nothing in-universe connecting Macross II to anything else. I believe the official answer is that there is no official continuity that should be expected between any of them haha. So, at the very least, Macross II can objectively be considered a disconnected piece with everything else.

[RaisingCane]

Next question: is the entire Supervision Army supposed to be nothing but brainwashed zombies or do they actually have some free will?  They have to be capable of operating without constant guidance from the Protodeviln, right?

Also, what in the world was up with Max's Valkyrie in this episode of SDFM?  What are those canisters on his vertical stabilizers supposed to be?  Some precursor to the FAST pack?

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

If DYRL is regarded as in-universe cinematic dramatization of the events of Space War 1, could that mean that Macross II is also an in-universe work of fiction (e.g. the Macross universe's equivalent of, say, Independence Day)?

Officially - at least as far as Shoji Kawamori is concerned - each and every Macross series is a stand-alone story and all are equally "canon" and equally inaccurate dramatizations of some "true" Macross timeline we're not privy to.

In practical terms, there is an in-universe movie called Do You Remember Love?... but it isn't necessarily the same movie as the real world Macross: Do You Remember Love?.  The in-universe film, as shown via snippets in Macross 7, apparently contains a number of scenes that are not found in the real world version like Max and Milia's wedding.

Macross has always sort of treated the truth of the First Space War as being somewhere between the events of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?.  Even Macross II does it... though Macross II and its parallel world timeline bias more heavily towards Do You Remember Love? and the later titles bias more heavily towards the original TV series for narrative details.  DYRL?'s designs have largely supplanted the original series versions too, further muddying the waters.

The fan theory that Macross II is an in-universe work of dramatic fiction is driven mostly by the reuse of large portions of Macross II's soundtrack in Macross 7, complete with at least one cameo by the Minmay Defense singer from the OVA's first episode.  However, it has never been officially acknowledged as such and Macross II's official status remains "parallel world story".

 

 

12 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Next question: is the entire Supervision Army supposed to be nothing but brainwashed zombies or do they actually some free will?  They have to capable of operating without constant guidance from the Protodeviln, right?

"Brainwashed" doesn't mean "mindless"... as seen in Macross 7 with the Protodeviln's appropriated UN Forces, they're still perfectly capable of rational thought, strategic thinking, and exercising personal initiative.  They've just had their thought processes and priorities altered to make them loyal and obedient to the Protodeviln.

For what it's worth, official publications tend to consider the Zentradi to be brainwashed too due to their heavy indoctrination.

 

12 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Also, what in the world was up with Max's Valkyrie in this episode of SDFM?  What are those canisters on his vertical stabilizers supposed to be?  Some precursor to the FAST pack?

 

They're missiles.

This was a quick-and-dirty fix for the scene that immediately follows where the animators realized they'd drawn Max firing WAY too many missiles at a theater scout pod.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

12 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They're missiles.

This was a quick-and-dirty fix for the scene that immediately follows where the animators realized they'd drawn Max firing WAY too many missiles at a theater scout pod.

Actually, they're not missiles...

Spoiler

They're cans of Petite Cola

Spoiler

They're mech-sized cans of Petite Cola

Spoiler

They're aileron-mounted mech-sized cans of Petite Cola

Spoiler

Max is really thirsty during this battle.

Spoiler

Really!

Spoiler

And Ben doesn't get any! He ate Max's steak the last time they all went out to dinner!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by pengbuzz

[RaisingCane]

Hmm, okay.  That's all I can think of for now.  I may have more questions later.

[RaisingCane]

New question: is it generally assumed that there are still hundreds of unfriendly Zentradi Bodol-scale and analogous Supervision Army fleets roaming the Milky Way and warring with each other as of Macross Delta?

[DewPoint]

I believe "hundreds" is too small of any estimate. 

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

New question: is it generally assumed that there are still hundreds of unfriendly Zentradi Bodol-scale and analogous Supervision Army fleets roaming the Milky Way and warring with each other as of Macross Delta?

I believe there are 5000 Zentran fleets still out there (Main Fleets), and who knows how many Supervision Army ones?

[RaisingCane]

With nearly five million ships per fleet, right?

[JB0]

The galaxy is a dangerous place. Exactly how dangerous is unclear, but pretty darn.

[RaisingCane]

Aside from Macross 7's brush with Chlore, has the UN Spacy run into any of these enormous fleets while exploring the galaxy for planets to colonize?  It would seem to be inevitable.

[RedWolf]

When you think about it the NUN strategy to deal with Rogue Zentradi fleets is not dissimilar to Japanese Bees killing Hornet scouts before they can inform their hive.

Varauta built a carrier with 8 Macross cannons and 8 fleet killer Reaction Missiles with 24 warheads at 10 gigatons for each warhead.  

 

Though most known Zentradi encounters is that those that went pirate or rebel. Being remnants of the 118th Main Fleet.

 

What I find interesting were the encounters while the Vajra War was going on. We know in 2059 Planet Sephira suffered a Zentradi attack. Also in 2059 the Aerial Knights had to deploy to assist NUNS dealing with a Zentradi incursion. 

You have to wonder if these two incidents are related. 

Sephira or the Laramis system it seems to me a hub of NUN territories. Sephira was one of the planets in Macross VF-X2 during the Second Unification War. Isamu made it his stop before coming to Eden to be a test pilot. Leon Sasaki folded from Sephira to Ouroboros. Messer was supposed to transfer to the Xaos branch in the Laramis system as he can't fight anymore. 

We know from Macross the Ride around in 2058 SMS had an encounter with a surviving ship from the Koper Main Fleet. Some 50 years before that fleet was annihilated by the Vajra. Yeah the Supervision Army was not the onlynkne Zentradi has to worry about. Guess the Koper Main Fleet bit more than they can chew.

Frontier and Galaxy was at the Vilos cluster of the Sagittarius-Carina arm around the center of the galaxy. Also at the Sagittarius arm is the abandoned colony Elysium where Rogue Zentradi unearth a buried Mobile Fortress. At the rim of the Sagittarius arm is the Brisingr Globular Cluster where the Protocuoture retreated to create their sub-races. 

 

It could be the Sagittarius arm was the old Protocuoture stomping grounds while the Orion arm where Earth was is the middle of knowhere.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

New question: is it generally assumed that there are still hundreds of unfriendly Zentradi Bodol-scale and analogous Supervision Army fleets roaming the Milky Way and warring with each other as of Macross Delta?

At the peak of the ancient Protoculture's military power, their Zentradi forces consisted of approximately 5,000 main fleet-strength forces.

Combat losses in the intervening 500,000 years have whittled that down to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 main fleet-strength forces by the "present day" of the First Space War in Super Dimension Fortress Macross or Macross: Do You Remember Love?.

 

3 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Aside from Macross 7's brush with Chlore, has the UN Spacy run into any of these enormous fleets while exploring the galaxy for planets to colonize?  It would seem to be inevitable.

"Yes and no".

Space is big.  Really big.  Unreasonably so, in fact, if your goal is to cover an interplanetary or interstellar distance quickly.  Traveling those long distances by folding higher-dimension spacetime is a quick and relatively efficient way to circumvent vast distances very quickly, but because space folding is effectively a form of teleportation it's a terrible way to travel if you're looking for something that you don't know the location of (like an enemy fleet) or you just want to explore.  It doesn't offer any way to see what's in the space between Points A and B.

For this reason, large fleets (both humanity's and the Zentradi's) rarely travel as a single monolithic formation.  The fleet's main force is surrounded by a loose halo of small sub-fleet scouting forces and early warning pickets spread across light years of space in every direction to warn of approaching threats and scout ahead of the fleet's chosen course.  Most of the Zentradi fleets that humanity has encountered are these smaller "branch fleet" forces of a thousand or so warships that are dispersed around thousands of light years in search of the Supervision Army's own fleets.  Vrlitwhai's fleet in the original series and DYRL? was one such scouting force.

The standard strategic practice of the New UN Forces is to avoid contact with the Zentradi if at all possible, and to destroy any branch fleets that discover emigrant fleets or planets to prevent them from being attacked by larger forces like a main fleet.  There hasn't been any direct mention of encountering a main fleet head-on in official setting material, but the accounts in Variable Fighter Master File incidate the prevailing strategic doctrine involving main fleets is one of avoidance... run away before they can see you, and blow up anything that might potentially provide them actionable intelligence about humanity.  The VF-25 Master File tells a story about the Macross Valiant fleet finding itself in close proximity to a Zentradi main fleet that just folded into the area and executing an emergency space fold to get out of the area before they're detected, with one ship needing to be evacuated when its fold system failed and then destroyed with a dimensional warhead to prevent it from falling into Zentradi hands.

In Macross II's timeline, Earth encounters several main fleets over the 80 years between the First Space War and Mardook invasion... mainly due to Zentradi ships escaping and linking up with other main fleets.

 

20 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

Though most known Zentradi encounters is that those that went pirate or rebel. Being remnants of the 118th Main Fleet.

"Rogue" doesn't mean "pirate" or "rebel"... just "unorganized", not under the direction of a main fleet due to the loss of the higher levels of the chain of command.

Zentradi don't have concepts like piracy in their "culture", all they understand is military service and their mission to destroy the Supervision Army.

The ones who become pirates or rebels are the Zentradi who have been exposed to Earth's culture and found themselves unable to fit in, like the terrorist organization Struggle in the 2010s.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[RaisingCane]

Was any in-universe explanation ever given for why there were no Meltran ship designs shown among the 118th Main Fleet?

How many Zentradi Factory Satellites are there?

Will M3 ever get a Macross Delta update???

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

Was any in-universe explanation ever given for why there were no Meltran ship designs shown among the 118th Main Fleet?

Nope.

(Unless you want to look at the in-universe DYRL?'s use of the Meltrandi as a separate and distinct faction standing in for the Supervision Army as the Zentradi's opponents as the reason... that the Meltrandi designs were historically inaccurate, in other words.)

 

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

How many Zentradi Factory Satellites are there?

Exactly how many would be hard to say for much the same reason as the number of active Zentradi main fleets... 500,000 years of battlefield attrition and replacement have left the numbers a bit muddied.

The official encyclopedia Macross Chronicle indicates that a Zentradi fleet has anywhere from 20 to 50 factory satellites in its logistical support arm, and that the total number of factory satellites was well into the millions in the ancient Protoculture's heyday.  The Regult type used by the Boddole Zer main fleet is produced out of the Esbeliben 4,432,369th Zentradi fully autonomous weapons development and production facility.  The Glaugs came out of the Roiquonmi 330,048,902nd.  The numbers on the battle suit plants were in the billions (the Nousjadeul-Ger's is the Flemenmik 7,721,242,921st, the Queadluun-Rau the Quimeliquola 74,710,020,692nd).

One of the more irresponsibly bonkers things the ancient Protoculture did was set the Zentradi's logistical support arm up to be completely self-sufficient and autonomous... so there are factory satellites churning out everything from uniforms, food, and ammunition right on up the scale to personnel, warships, and even other factory satellites.  It's that insane level of autonomous operation that has allowed the Zentradi and Supervision Army to wage a forever war against each other for half a million years and counting.

(It's especially worrying that those massive numbers of autonomous weapons plants are the Protoculture's lowest bidder manufacturing tech... the stuff they reserved for their own use veers into Clarke's Third Law territory by dint of being able to build without limit by cheating its way around conservation of matter as long as it had an adequate power source.  One can only imagine the insanity that might've ensued if they'd been able to combine that with their invention of a power source that defies conservation of energy, which they put into the Evil-series and later biotechnological horrors like the Fold Evil and Birdhuman.)

 

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

Will M3 ever get a Macross Delta update???

Yes, Mr March is working on that.

Those pesky day jobs do tend to get in the way of hobbies... though I know he's not quite as happy with the later titles that don't publish actual line art for him to color.

Lucky me, I just have to keep the servers ticking over and paid-for while I work on my own site.

[azrael]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Space is big.  Really big.  Unreasonably so, in fact, if your goal is to cover an interplanetary or interstellar distance quickly.  Traveling those long distances by folding higher-dimension spacetime is a quick and relatively efficient way to circumvent vast distances very quickly, but because space folding is effectively a form of teleportation it's a terrible way to travel if you're looking for something that you don't know the location of (like an enemy fleet) or you just want to explore.  It doesn't offer any way to see what's in the space between Points A and B.

People's notion of how big space normally doesn't do it justice. Space is big. Really big. No bigger. Keep going. Still too small. Still no; keep going. Still not big enough. Nope, still not big enough. Nope. Nope. Still too small. Not even close. Stop trying to stretch. Even Mr. Fantastic can't stretch that far. Nope, keep going. Nope, bigger. Bigger. Still to small. Still too small. Give it up, you're still too small. You already tore your limbs off and you still didn't cover how big space is.

It's by sheer luck NUNS is running into these fleets.

[RaisingCane]

It sounds like the factory satellites reproduce like Von Neumann machines.

Are the Zentradi supposedly confined to the Milky Way or have they spread to other galaxies as well?

 

[RedWolf]

Interesting thing about DYRL is that Zentradi and Meltrandi have different tech bases. Zentradi tech has organic technology. Meltrandi tech is more cybernetic and also led by an AI. 

My head canon how this applies to a SDFM TV continuity wise is that the Protoculture factions during the Civil War used different gear from each other. But they had no choice but combine their forces once the Protodevlin came at play. For all we know it is a three way war thus too busy to look into the rumored Miclones and the fate of the 118th Main Fleet.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

It sounds like the factory satellites reproduce like Von Neumann machines.

Well, at least one of them anyway... factory satellites are designed to manufacture one specific product in a single, completely self-contained operation that goes all the way from collecting raw material with a fleet of drone ships to the finished fully-operational product.  It's an exponentially larger version of the all-in-one factory concept behind facilities like Ford's River Rouge factory at the time of its inception.  So individual factory satellites aren't self-replicating, but there is noted to be at least one factory satellite out there that has the task of building factory satellites.

 

5 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Are the Zentradi supposedly confined to the Milky Way or have they spread to other galaxies as well?

We can't say for certain since humanity lacks the technology to reach for other galaxies themselves... but it's definitely very unlikely that the Zentradi or Supervision Army would've made it to another galaxy.  Not only are they basically completely preoccupied with their own private forever war, but it's a pretty high hurdle technologically and their lowest bidder fold systems probably aren't up to the job.  It's questionable whether the ancient Protoculture's even were.  The only species known to have intergalactic range are the Vajra, whose biological technology was the envy of even the Protoculture.

Fold navigation is an efficient but fairly inconvenient way to get around space.  As noted previously, because it's basically a form of teleportation by folder higher dimensions you're not able to examine or observe the space between Point A and Point B while you travel.  You're just at one point, then you're in the folded space, then you're at the other point.  The other main problem is that it requires a fairly massive amount of energy to tie higher dimension spacetime in knots using gravity control and all that energy is needed upfront as a fold jump's range is limited to how far out you can compress that space to a single point.  Your maximum potential range in one fold jump is limited by the amount of energy your ship can spare for the fold system and how much energy that system can store in order to make the largest possible fold in higher-dimensional spacetime.  Jumping tens or even hundreds of light years can be done reasonably casually though it still requires at least some advance notice.  Thousands of light years can take a while to charge up for, and that energy demand grows in a geometric progression as distance increases.  Consequently, with the level of fold technology possessed by humans and the Zentradi it can take a long time to do something like cross our own galaxy.  It's been indicated that humanity's farthest-flung holdings on emigrant fleets and emigrant planets like the Brisingr cluster are 10 years away from Earth when traveling by space fold with the resources of an emigrant fleet.

Andromeda's ~2.5 million light years away.  To get there by space fold, assuming you could take all the fuel and resources you'd ever need with you, would take centuries or even longer with a conventional fold system.

(It might be more achievable with the Vajra's zero-time fold biotechnology, the first human imitation of which is said to be ten times as capable as the conventional fold systems in use at the time... but that requires large amounts of fold quartz, which even humanity struggles to acquire by pillaging Protoculture ruins.)

[sketchley]

6 hours ago, azrael said:

People's notion of how big space normally doesn't do it justice. (...)  It's by sheer luck NUNS is running into these fleets.

Agreed.  As one astronomer put it: when two galaxies collide and merge*, NONE of the stars inside them hit each other because the distance between each star is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo vast.

So, yeah, it's blind (bad) luck that they ever encounter each other.

* literally forcing themselves through each other before making a u-turn to slam back together in one big mess!

Edited December 11, 2021 by sketchley

[RaisingCane]

I've always been a little unclear on Zentradi rules of engagement.  Aren't they forbidden--or, at least, strongly discouraged--from making contact with Miclones?  If so, shouldn't they be the ones who hightail it out of there if they stumble across a human colony or fleet?

 

Edited December 11, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

I've always been a little unclear on Zentradi rules of engagement.  Aren't they forbidden--or, at least, strongly discouraged--from making contact with Miclones?  If so, shouldn't they be the ones who hightail it out of there if they stumble across a human colony or fleet?

So... initially, the ancient Protoculture heavily indoctrinated their Zentradi forces in order to keep them obedient and prevent them from developing beyond their role as the ancient Protoculture's expendable clone army.  Their directives included a general prohibition on anything outside of the relatively narrow focus of their military lifestyle (activities deemed "productive" or "creative"), very specific rules on when and how they are allowed to interact with clone troops of the opposite sex, and a safety net sort of regulation that prohibited the Zentradi from interfering with the ancient Protoculture themselves in any way.

When the Supervision Army emerged, the Zentradi were unable to fight them effectively because their forces were made up of brainwashed Protoculture.  The directive had to be either lifted or amended to facilitate an actual defense.  By the time the war was over, the Protoculture had lost so much that they were unable to reassert control over the active Zentradi forces and reinstate the directive to not interefere with the Protoculture.

Fast forward 500,000 years, and what the Zentradi remember of that ancient directive that had ceased to be a part of their everyday lives half a million years ago is that some of their most ancient military records contain dire warnings instructing the Zentradi to avoid worlds inhabited by miclones.

 

As such, the directive is not entirely effective/observed anymore... and it requires the Zentradi to know beforehand that they're encountering miclones.  It took Vrlitwhai's branch fleet some time to analyze the recorded combat data from their reconnaissance Regults that accompanied the attack on South Ataria island and discover that the people they'd attacked were miclones.  It's been 500,000 years or more since any Zentradi saw a living specimen of the Protoculture, and humanity's spacecraft look nothing like the ones the Protoculture used in their heyday so the Zentradi don't inherently recognize them as "miclones".  The First Space War started, if you discount the booby trap, becuase Vrlitwhai's fleet initially thought it'd found a Supervision Army base after discovering the ship they'd been chasing on the planet's surface.

There is one notable incident where a commander did decide to pack up and leave like that, though.  It's in the Macross II timeline's story Macross: Eternal Love Song.  One of the Meltrandi main fleets chases a Zentradi main fleet into our solar system and sends a scouting party to Earth.  The information the scouts bring back causes the living command computer governing the fleet to conclude it's stumbled on a surviving enclave of the ancient Protoculture and orders its forces out of the system immediately.